wake up call

Friday.

I shut both clocks before they finish the first ring. Pocket card. Fifth pencil line still there: Show up when it isn't shiny.

[ZIP]

Torn bag. The gloves Mom bought quietly yesterday are already in the side pocket.

Today isn't a map mic.

Today is trash bags and sweep lines and a fair that smells like popcorn and wet cardboard.

Kitchen. Dad lowers the newspaper and looks at me over his glasses for a long second.

"Rear thrusters day," he says.

"Cleanup," I correct.

He smiles. "Same engine."

I eat standing again. Pancakes taste like fuel and nerves. Mom doesn't tease the missing galaxy story. She just squeezes my shoulder once?launch permission.

***

[HISS]

Bus. Leo has two pairs of gloves somehow. He tosses me one like a thruster part.

"Captain's not flying solo," he says before I can apologize for existing.

Amber sits three rows up with ticket-booth kids. She turns, sees my cleanup badge sticker Mom printed, and doesn't pity me. She just says, "Hey, Dave?find me if the line explodes."

Hey, Dave.

A nickname that isn't a weapon.

I say, "Copy," and mean it.

Leo elbows me gently. "Open channel acquired."

***

School fair transforms the courtyard into a temporary planet: booths, chalk arrows, a speaker coughing music. Ryan runs a flashy game stall with lights that blink like they own the night early. Maya paints signs with pastel precision. Bro says "bro" at a balloon and somehow that helps inflate it.

Cleanup staging is behind the food tables?bins, bags, a mop that has seen war.

The fair supervisor points. "You two?perimeter and spill response. Stay visible. No vanishing."

Visible.

The word used to be a threat.

Today it's an order I asked for by not quitting.

Before first bell of the fair setup, I almost hide in the bathroom and run a private sim behind my eyes. The tile wall is a perfect blank screen. I put my glove-hand on it, feel cold realness, and walk back out.

Courage, it turns out, is sometimes just returning to the bins.

***

First hour is ugly ordinary: napkins that flee like enemy drones, a juice spill like a purple nebula, someone else's glitter in a crack that will outlive civilizations.

I want to abort into my head?Vanguard, asteroid, freeze?because fantasy is cleaner than sticky shoes.

Leo bumps my glove. "Stay on channel."

I stay.

We work.

Spill. Bag. Tie. Sweep. Repeat until my brain stops offering prettier missions.

A teacher I don't know thanks us without learning our names. I decide thanks without fame still counts as contact.

When a ketchup bottle detonates near the fries booth, we move like a two-person damage crew. Leo spots. I wipe. No salute needed.

Later, when a trash bag splits open like a failed airlock, Leo and I redo the whole tie procedure without complaining. Ryan walks past during the mess and smirks. I keep my eyes on the knot. The knot is the mission. The smirk is weather.

***

Mid-morning, Ryan's stall crowds. He spots me bagging cups and calls, bright for an audience, "Invisible Seat found his calling!"

A few laughs. Old heat in my ears.

I could freeze.

I could invent a mission in my skull and disappear behind the bins.

Instead I walk the spill path, kneel, wipe, and say without looking up, "Name's Dave."

Not loud.

Loud enough for the kids nearest to hear.

A tiny silence follows?then someone asks Leo where the napkins went, like we are part of the fair's real machinery.

Leo's laugh is short and proud. Ryan's joke dies without fuel.

Amber jogs over during a ticket lull with two water bottles. "Hydrate, cleanup crew." She hesitates. "Your map day was cool. Sorry you got bumped."

"It's okay," I say, and shock myself by mostly meaning it. "Showing up still counts."

She nods. "Yeah. It does."

Then she's gone?ticket booth gravity?but the open channel doesn't slam.

I file that under evidence: not everyone is Ryan. Not every glance is a targeting lock.

***

Lunch break on the wall. Torn bag at my feet. Gloves sticky. I almost fall into a daydream where the fair is a spaceport and I'm commander of refuse logistics, which is funny until it becomes escape.

I shut it down on purpose.

"I used to think the real battles were only in my head," I tell Leo.

"And now?"

"Now I think the head battles are practice. The real ones are? this." I lift a bag. "And talking. And not leaving you solo."

Leo goes quiet in the good way. "Then we're at war with the part that wants easy."

"War against laziness," I try, tasting the big words in kid size. "Even when laziness wears a cool spaceship."

Leo bumps my shoulder. "Then we keep flying the ugly route."

We eat fast. I answer when he asks if my hands hurt. They do. I say so. Item one forever.

Between spills I catch Leo watching the ticket booth with a weird pride, like my name on a list?even the wrong list?still counts as a docked ship. I don't tell him I saw. Some friend signals work better unacknowledged.

Afternoon stretches. My arms hurt. A little kid thanks me for clearing a sticky patch so she won't fall. Nobody films it. Nobody gives me a fountain nickname.

I still feel seen by the work itself.

Ms. Carter passes through off-duty, spots us, and tips two fingers like she did when she told Ryan to let me finish. "Ownership looks different in gloves," she says, and keeps walking.

Maya drops off a stack of ruined poster corners for disposal and mutters, "You're doing the unfun job. Respect." Then she flees before the sentence can become a whole friendship. Soft missiles again. I'll take them.

***

Near teardown, choice arrives clean.

The supervisor needs one volunteer to stay late and finish the far bins while others pack lights?lonely perimeter, no audience, easy to fake a stomach ache and slip into the bus early with a comic in my head.

Leo glances at me. He won't decide for me.

In my skull the Vanguard flares: Escape pod ready. Asteroid excuse online. Freeze authorized.

I hear Ch1 me tangled in blankets, saving galaxies before pancakes.

I hear Ch7 me oversleeping.

I hear the checklist.

I take the far bins.

My legs want the bus. My hands take the bags anyway. That split is the whole story of me right now?and the part that grabs bags is finally winning a round.

"I'll do it," I say.

Irreversible in the small way that matters: I stay when leaving would be softer.

Leo stays too, of course.

We haul.

We sweep.

We don't talk much. Thrusters don't always roar; sometimes they just push.

In the far bins, under a sky going orange, I notice my reflection in a darkened classroom window?gloves, sticky badge, tired eyes. Not a commander. Not Invisible Seat. Just a kid who stayed.

That reflection is the wake-up call.

When the last bag cinches shut, the courtyard looks almost like a school again. Ordinary. Earned.

Sun leans west. Fair noise thins. Ryan leaves early with his lights in a fancy case. He doesn't look at us. That's fine. Not every enemy needs a final boss cutscene.

Amber waves from the gate. "See you Monday, Dave!"

Monday.

A future with my name in it.

***

Walk home sticky and proud in a quiet way. Bag tear worse. I don't care for a whole block. Sidewalk cracks try their ambush. I hop one and call it a micro-dodge, private and dumb and mine.

On the walk I replay the far-bins choice the way I used to replay space battles?frame by frame?except this time the hero move is staying. No plasma. No applause. Just bags, and a friend, and a name I said out loud.

[SQUEAK]

Mom wrinkles her nose, then hugs me anyway. "You smell like effort."

Dad lowers the newspaper. "How were the rear thrusters?"

"Loud," I say. "Ugly. Working."

He nods like that's the whole report he wanted.

***

Night. Shower. Two alarms set for a normal Saturday that will still need courage in smaller ways. Pocket card on the desk. Map notes. Cleanup gloves drying like trophies nobody else would claim.

I lie back under comic-book posters and let one soft foreshadow through?not a time jump, just a distant signal on long-range scan:

Someday, getting out of bed might feel like a battle I don't want to fight.

Someday laziness might wear adult clothes.

But tonight I already fought a kid-sized war and showed up when it wasn't shiny.

The battle isn't over.

It's begun.

Saturday's alarms are already set. I look at them and understand the war isn't a single Friday. It's a hundred small wake-ups chained together. Tonight I practice the opposite: I earned sleep.

I sleep without the asteroid dream. Just tired muscles and a brain that, for once, doesn't need to invent a war to feel awake.

amber to green?one click.

I whisper into the dark, not as fantasy commander, as Dave:

"Wake up."

And for once, I don't mean only in the morning.